Not really an error, but that bad behavior has caused that I LOST ALL MY 
POV-RAY SCENE FILES!

What exactly happened: during the recent versions, POV-Ray (Windows) 
installs under some circumstances not into "My Programs", but inside the 
documents folder "My Documents". This is, so far, desired by the POV-Ray 
developers.

I always download the latest Beta versions in order to enjoy the new or the 
improved features. But recognizing that newadays the program POV-Ray is not 
where programs are but where documents are, I always had to cut out and 
paste all my beloved scene files (some date back to the early nineties!!!) 
from the freshly created documents sub folder for POV-Ray into the original 
POV-Ray folder inside "My Programs". Each time I installed a new Beta, I had 
to do this. Always, the new Betas touched all my scene files and moved them 
to the new location...

One day I recognized I couldn't find anymore any of my hundreds of scene 
files. Routinely, I looked into the new folders inside my documents, but 
couldn't see them there, too. I believe, that somewhen during the last 
installations I might have forgotten to move them back to where they belong 
in my file system concept, or whatever. Seems to be my own fault, but it is 
caused by the unusual installation location newadays. Fact is, all of them 
are now lost! And there are really no words which could even come close to 
describe my frustration, anger, hate, helplessness and sadness. There are no 
words which are strong enough. As I said, my oldes files dated back to the 
begin of POV-Ray, those days for DOS. I kept them full of pride as a POV-Ray 
museum. They meant a lot for me, it was my entire history with POV-Ray. Now 
they're gone.

The same with all my later scene files up to now, and also the same with all 
the scene files I do through my company for our clients. All gone. All 
lost...

Those cannot be brought back or replaced, they're lost forever, and that 
causes me and also my company quite a lot, not only financially.

I herewith urge the POV-Ray developers to abandon the concept of installing 
POV-Ray under certain circumstances in any other location than where 
programs belong. It is bad enough that I lost everything. But I don't want 
that this happens to any other POV-Ray user. In fact, I don't beg. I demand.

Post a reply to this message

Sven Littkowski wrote:
> Not really an error, but that bad behavior has caused that I LOST ALL MY 
> POV-RAY SCENE FILES!

I assume you have backups though, so it won't be much of a problem ;-)

Now, it is quite stupid to select the "Program" folder of any program to 
store your *own* files, even more so if you are using a beta version. The 
"Program" folder is not your folder to mess with, and the same would happen 
if say you kept your MS Office documents in the MS Office program folder. 
Your files belong in the documents folder (and then only in the one 
belonging to your user's profile or the shared folder!), so restore your 
backups to that folder and all should be fine.

Sure, POV-Ray's installer could try to keep you from shooting yourself in 
the foot, but at what development cost should it detect that you keep 
copying your files back *repeatedly* where they never belonged in the first 
place?

	Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

- That development cost could be avoided - by just not doing it (file 
movements), Thorsten.

- If I hadn't lost my backups folder (within the Scenes folder) I wouldn't 
post here at all but smile happily.

- Stupid or not, but why to move a person's file first-hand? That is the 
question. make it optionally.

- Nothing is a reason still, to create program installations inside the "My 
Documents" folder (same as you say that scenes should be now outside of the 
POV-Ray folder).

- How to restore from any backups if all files in folders and sub folders 
have been gone? Let me know, please.





"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message 
news:4aac9b3f$1@news.povray.org...
> Sven Littkowski wrote:
>> Not really an error, but that bad behavior has caused that I LOST ALL MY 
>> POV-RAY SCENE FILES!
>
> I assume you have backups though, so it won't be much of a problem ;-)
>
> Now, it is quite stupid to select the "Program" folder of any program to 
> store your *own* files, even more so if you are using a beta version. The 
> "Program" folder is not your folder to mess with, and the same would 
> happen if say you kept your MS Office documents in the MS Office program 
> folder. Your files belong in the documents folder (and then only in the 
> one belonging to your user's profile or the shared folder!), so restore 
> your backups to that folder and all should be fine.
>
> Sure, POV-Ray's installer could try to keep you from shooting yourself in 
> the foot, but at what development cost should it detect that you keep 
> copying your files back *repeatedly* where they never belonged in the 
> first place?
>
> Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

Sven Littkowski wrote:
> - If I hadn't lost my backups folder (within the Scenes folder) I wouldn't 
> post here at all but smile happily.

I would recommend reading a bit on he web how to keep backups. A copy in the 
same folder, on the same harddisk, or the same system for that matter is not 
a backup. It is a space-wasting copy.

A simple start could be <http://tweakhound.com/xp/backup/1.htm>, another 
option would be buying a backup software (less than $100) from one of the 
large software vendors. Usually the tutorials and manuals that come with 
such software (on its CD) guide you through the process quite well.

> - Stupid or not, but why to move a person's file first-hand? That is the 
> question. make it optionally.

Because they never were your files! All what happened is that POV-Ray's 
*own* folder was moved, and you happened to be storing your data there where 
it did not belong. In fact, by your own account, you repeatedly moved it 
back where they did not belong. - You played with fire and you got burned, 
well, sorry, but you are old enough to know when not to play with fire.

> - Nothing is a reason still, to create program installations inside the "My 
> Documents" folder (same as you say that scenes should be now outside of the 
> POV-Ray folder).

Tell Microsoft. It has been explained numerous times around here (and 
elsewhere) that Vista does not always provide access to the programs folder, 
so POV-Ray had to be changed to be compatible with Vista. You should ask 
yourself why you didn't provide POV-Ray's installer with the privileges to 
install in that very folder? - In fact your whole account of what happens 
make little sense in that regard.

> - How to restore from any backups if all files in folders and sub folders 
> have been gone? Let me know, please.

Well, it would have been easy *if* you had backups. You say you have none 
and never created any, and the only person to blame for that is yourself.

	Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich schrieb:
> I would recommend reading a bit on he web how to keep backups. A copy in 
> the same folder, on the same harddisk, or the same system for that 
> matter is not a backup. It is a space-wasting copy.

Well, not necessarily: It may also be a poor man's version archieval 
system. Still not a backup however.

>> - Stupid or not, but why to move a person's file first-hand? That is 
>> the question. make it optionally.
> 
> Because they never were your files! All what happened is that POV-Ray's 
> *own* folder was moved, and you happened to be storing your data there 
> where it did not belong.

What I do concede to Sven is that the folder being named "scenes" gives 
no hint that this is supposed to be only the samples scene. Plus, I'm 
not sure but I think when POV-Ray is first started up, both its "Open 
File..." and "Save As..." paths default to that very folder.

And unfortunately, other software used to be so poorly designed, 
*requiring* user data to be stored somewhere in the "Program Files" 
folder, that it is tempting to assume that POV-Ray might indeed want 
your own scenes to be there.


Now, with POV-Ray's "scenes" folder indeed placed inside the user data 
subtree, I think it is really worth to consider renaming that folder.

Or, as a matter of fact, this now *being* user data, it should actually 
be assumed that any files in there *are* user data and *must not* be 
deleted when uninstalling, re-installing or updating POV-Ray.

(I actually think that the sample scene files and default include files 
should instead be placed in the "Program Files"; of course this opens up 
the problem that the sample scenes can no longer be rendered to the 
directory they're in, but the proper solution would not be to work 
around by placing the sample scenes where they don't belong, but to 
redesign the input/output directory concept.)

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich schrieb:
>> I would recommend reading a bit on he web how to keep backups. A copy 
>> in the same folder, on the same harddisk, or the same system for that 
>> matter is not a backup. It is a space-wasting copy.
> 
> Well, not necessarily: It may also be a poor man's version archieval 
> system. Still not a backup however.
> 
>>> - Stupid or not, but why to move a person's file first-hand? That is 
>>> the question. make it optionally.
>>
>> Because they never were your files! All what happened is that 
>> POV-Ray's *own* folder was moved, and you happened to be storing your 
>> data there where it did not belong.
> 
> What I do concede to Sven is that the folder being named "scenes" gives 
> no hint that this is supposed to be only the samples scene. Plus, I'm 
> not sure but I think when POV-Ray is first started up, both its "Open 
> File..." and "Save As..." paths default to that very folder.

I agree that the naming of that folder, rooted in the 8 character DOS length 
limit is not ideal any more. Probably it should be named "Samples Scenes" or 
"Example Scenes" or if it should be shorted just "Examples".

	Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

Now finally we start slowly to get somewhere, this is a begin...

Also, POV-Ray should be smart enough to recognize that many files inside 
that Scene folder are user-made (not inside a list of POV-Ray sample files).

Many other smart installations, or let's say, de-installations recognize 
easily that there are files in a folder which don't belong to the program 
itself (user-made files).

Location of scne files:
Since the earliest versions of POV-Ray, I kept the scene files inside a sub 
folder of the program folder. I liked to keep that good old tradition. I had 
one time a virus, which destroyed all files and sub folders within the "My 
Documents" folder. So of course I don't keep relevant, important or 
sensitive files there. And I also came accross, some time ago, to a Trojan 
Horse which attempted to spy out what files someone has in the "My 
Documents" folder, as well as their contents (of some file types, like Word 
documents). Looking at the Assembler code of that Trojan Horse showed up 
this. I studied programming.



> (...)
>
> I agree that the naming of that folder, rooted in the 8 character DOS 
> length limit is not ideal any more. Probably it should be named "Samples 
> Scenes" or "Example Scenes" or if it should be shorted just "Examples".
>
> Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:

> Now, it is quite stupid to select the "Program" folder of any program to 
> store your *own* files, even more so if you are using a beta version. 

Still, I'd definitely consider such behavior to be a bug which should
be fixed for the final version. An installer should never assume all
files in the specified installation directory to be under its control.
That's why installers ask if they may overwrite a file in the target
location and why InstallShield logs the install process and only
uninstalls files which were actually installed.

On the other hand, it is still a bit unclear to me what actually
happened. The report is rather vague, with "one day" no longer finding
the scene files and "believing" something happend "somewhen during the
last installation". Also, why would the 3.7 installer move the
directory of an existing installation at all? I'd expect 3.6
to be unaffected and remaining fully operational. Is this
only to clean up installations of older betas?

Post a reply to this message

Sven Littkowski wrote:

> Those cannot be brought back or replaced, they're lost forever, and that 
> causes me and also my company quite a lot, not only financially.

You should be aware that they probably can still be brought back.
If they are important enough to you, I'd recommend to stop using your
hard disk immediately and bring in to a professional recovery service.
I don't know what that usually costs but after all you don't have
physical damage just accidental deletion to cope with.

Post a reply to this message

Sven Littkowski wrote:
> Many other smart installations, or let's say, de-installations recognize 
> easily that there are files in a folder which don't belong to the program 
> itself (user-made files).
> 
Yeah. Despite having diminished sympathy for actually making this 
mistake (and not knowing it was one), I have to agree here. Most 
uninstallers/installers will *only* effect the files that they original 
placed. Other files, which might have been added later, are left alone. 
A few, though very few, will tell there is something there, and ask if 
you want to removed anyway. None of them do the smart thing, and offer 
you a look at the files it can't recognize, so you can decide if you 
want them a) left alone, or even b) moved. All in all, some of this 
stuff would be semi-trivial, but the bone headed assumption of 99.9% of 
all installers is, "This is a clean install, on a new machine, so I can 
do any damn thing I please with it." At best *some* are smart enough to 
leave things alone, in case you need to reinstall the application, to 
fix something, but even that isn't always helpful, since, unless if 
generates a backup of the original contents (which is places in its own 
directory, instead of some place the average person could do something 
with them), it may not "fix" the problem at all, if the problem is in a 
file that it ignores intentionally, like settings files.

All in all, the compromises made on Windows, especially after Vista came 
along, as a bloody mess, and most installers simply aren't smart enough 
to tell when/if they are about to hose something important, or their 
installation will, in the case of repair, actually fix anything.

But, in the end.. You messed up Sven, badly, and no one in the IT 
industry would have a lot of sympathy for how. I make similar mistakes 
out of laziness myself, and the fact that the backup system I do have is 
an intentionally brain damaged one that came with my external, which 
some times won't even complete, if it decides it doesn't like *one* file 
  some place. It also won't back up critical settings, or the like, or 
documents it doesn't recognize. Replacing it though, would cost me money 
and time, but if I lost everything, I would blame my own stupidity, not 
POVRay's installer.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message